Tracey Durning

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Tracey Durning

For the past 17 years, Tracey has been a Founder, CEO, private foundation Executive Director and Chief Strategist-Solutions Director across various organizations and social issue areas (to date: climate change, marine conservation and ending the euthanasia of adoptable shelter animals in the United States). Her goal, in most cases, is to collectively mobilize an array of key stakeholders within a system to catalyze the most transformative impact. Aside from penning her own pieces, her work has been featured in Barons magazine , The New York Times and The Stanford Social Innovation Review

In climate change, Tracey was a founder of the investment group Aligned Intermediary (AI) created  to help institutional investors increase the flow of private capital into climate infrastructure projects and companies through direct investments. AI mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars into the clean energy space — after which time the investment team went on to launch the multi billion dollar Aligned Climate Capital-Ares Management climate infrastructure fund. AI was also notable for architecting the Climate Finance Partnership with BlackRock, Germany, France and a consortium of philanthropies — an unprecedented cooperation of stakeholders committed to jointly developing a vehicle for investing in emerging markets. Tracey was also the founding CEO of Energy Options Network, a nonprofit accelerator focused on providing deep analysis and intensive hands-on support to select developers working to get transformative climate-scale technologies outside of the mainstream portfolio to market (i.e. gaseous fission, advanced nuclear, carbon capture, superhot rock geothermal energy, zero-carbon liquid fuels). EON’s support came in the form of technical, business and communications expertise, identifying and forging strategic partnerships and investor introductions/relations. Finally, she is a founder of the Electrification Coalition (EC), a nonpartisan group of industry leaders collectively committed to transportation electrification in the US at mass scale. EC was recognized for its outstanding work partnering with state leaders to accelerate EV adoption in targeted communities across the US.

In marine conservation, Tracey is a founder of Oceans 5 (O5), a global funders collaborative that seeks to protect the planet’s five oceans. Its core, but not exclusive, focus areas are increasing marine protected areas, restoring global fisheries and constraining offshore oil and gas development. The organization gives new and experienced philanthropists an effective platform to collectively target their assets for greater impact and scale. A handful of spinoff collaboratives also emerged from O5 focused on specific issue areas including plastics and shark protection. To date there are two dozen O5 partners collectively deploying hundreds of millions of dollars into marine projects including Bloomberg Philanthropies, Oak Foundation, the Wyss Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Waitt Foundation, Marisla Foundation, Planet Heritage Foundation, Moore Charitable Trust, Paul Angell Family Foundation, Zegar Family Foundation, Adessium, Stellar Blue Fund, Oceankind, Arcadia, Joy Family Foundation and the Tiffany & Co Foundation.

As an animal lover to the extreme, Tracey was the founding CEO of Target Zero (TZ), a group that mentored over 21 cities and counties to zero euthanasia of adoptable shelter animals between 2013 and 2018. To accomplish this, TZ created a best practices program and—city by city—mentored an array of stakeholders within each community to accomplish their ‘get to zero’ goal. In 2018, she gifted Target Zero to Maddie’s Fund—one of the biggest and best operational funders in the animal welfare space—to scale its operations and life saving efforts even further.

She is also an active board member of the Windsor Square Association where she resides with her husband, 7 year old daughter, two rescue dogs and a cat. Specifically, she oversees a robust Block Captain Network focused on connecting residents more effectively to one other, as well as to the LAPD, with the goal of promoting more safety and alignment around key issues for the community. As a former journalist/producer (ABC News, CBS News, CNN) and filmmaker (i.e. Executive Producer, Freedom Writers) Tracey often drives the communications for the initiatives she builds.